Well I've been spurred on to post some stuff up from that thread wondering where all the activity has gone. So here goes - something completely off topic for me, a "Ventnor West" set, comprising a Terrier and two LCDR 4 wheel coaches. I was very taken with this extremely small complete train when I visited the IoW last year:
There are many things that I'd like to model, most of them sit in the back of my mind and never get much further, but I came across a complete Wills Terrier on eBay which I won for a whole ten pounds, inspired by some of Lysander's excellent restorations. It was in pretty poor condition, battered bufferbeams, a rather thick paint job, heavy with the glue and the chassis was completely seized up. I'm afraid I failed to take any progress photos of this, so a brief description will have to do. As it was whitemetal body with brass chassis, after extracting the motor and a couple of other delicate things it had a week long bath in industrial strength Nitromors, which soon saw to virtually all of the above problems.
Once all the bits were cleaned up (and it was just bits after that!) it was mostly a case of gluing them back together a bit more carefully, with the aid of some milliput to tidy things up. I did take a hacksaw to the bunker, I wanted the IoW extended edition. The rear of the bunker was a separate piece, but the toolbox was also mouled on as a solid lump of metal. So that was hacked off, but II'd have spent years filing it smooth. So with a bit of cunning and a vice, I encouraged the flare in the other direction and stuck it back in back to front.
Then it was out with the paint, and I decided I'd have a go at lining it out using a bowpen. It's not perfect, and nor is it finished, but here it is:
Still needs boiler bands doing, along with some other details adding, pipes, safety valves etc (the originals were unusable). And I still haven't got back to wiring it up again. But I flitted...
...To the carriages....
I cobbled together some drawings on AutoCAD using a combination of some drawings I had of similar carriages and photos of the actual ones I wanted to model. Probably not exact, but they look right. A few bits of plastic were duly fed into the Silhouette cutter and with a bit of work, out popped this:
This carriage has an extra layer of panelling, but all on the same principle. I took this picture to illustrate how I form the tumbehome. On the right is the main carriage side in 20 thou plastic, with 10 thou panelling layers. On the left is a 30 thou backing layer, with horizontal strips the right thickness to form the tumbehome. The 20 thou side is gently pre-bent, then the layers brought together with solvent which holds it all in the right shape. Easy, consistent tumblehome which also leaves a perfect gap for glazing later.
Here the sides have been brought together to form the whole body, but the ends here are still loose, just a slide fit, going snugly inbetween the sides. The Strngth is all in a very thick floor (about 100 thou) along with "false" ends positioned slightly inward from the real end, as well as any intermediate compartment walls (not many with these as they're saloons) You can also see the beginnings of the roof here. The 30 thou side layer is slightly reduced in height compared to the side proper, leaving a ledge for a false roof to sit in, and the roof formers have been glued in place.
Next stage in roof production is 2-3mm strips of plastic laid longitudinally along the roof formers:
Once set, a good sand down, test fitting until it is flush with the top edge of the ends. Followed by adding the roof proper like so:
Pre-curving the plastic first helps, then plenty of solvent.
Here's things with a few more steps, both literally and figuratively:
Hopefully all fairly obvious, the torpedo vents are ratio, everything else is bits of plastic sheet, plus some brass wire for the comms cord.
Then it was time for some paint, hurrah!
and another excursion for the bowpen. It looks a bit thicker in the photo than in real life, but I was extremely pleased how it came out.
Finally, with some homemade transfers applied and blended in with a dab of paint and a small brush, and a scattering of other whitemetal components, here it all is:
So there we are, a "Ventnor West" set, Terrier, LCDR saloon and brake third 4 wheelers. As I say, the Terrier still needs a little finishing off at some point, but it's largely a complete project, and now sits on a shelf in my room. One day it might get a little diorama, if the fancy takes me, but for now, this was a nice little self contained project.
Bigmet, thank you for that description, it does sound like I've got all original parts. Like I say, as it isn't 
